


someone worthy of you

by shannedo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, I am doomed to love rarepairs, Mild Sexual Content, Not Underage, Period Typical Attitudes, Robb Stark is a Legend Who Stans Strong Women, Sansa is in charge of her own destiny thanks very much, background Dacey/Robb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 22:43:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannedo/pseuds/shannedo
Summary: "Father once promised me a match with someone worthy.” Back when she was just a little girl, blind to the evils of the people who would use her. “Someone brave and gentle and strong. Harry wasn’t it.”Sansa Stark had turned down so many marriage proposals that at this point, she thought the only mannotintent on marrying her was the one she actually wanted.





	someone worthy of you

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe this was originally supposed to be like... 500 words long? Honestly, it was.
> 
> Set in an alternate timeline where when things start going south in King's Landing, Ned does one hard "fuck this shit, I'm out," and sails home with his daughters and household. AKA what we all wished had happened. Nobody dies/everybody lives because I just finished rereading AGOT and it has made me very sad.
> 
> Starts about five years after the start of AGOT and takes place over about a good few years, so Sansa is very much of age.

**I.**

A stiff autumn breeze blew through the yard as she came out to see Ser Hardyng off and Sansa pulled her thick cloak closer around her. The yard was busy with stable hands and servants readying horses and saddlebags and at the guard’s station, Jory was going through a new rotation with Alyn. There was the sharp, fresh scent of coming snows on the air, but nothing could put Robb and Arya off, her brother and sister crossing swords across the yard. The sight always brought a smile to her lips. Even with her limited knowledge of swordplay, Sansa knew they made for a peculiar sparring match. Robb had grown so wide of shoulder and strong of arm that he could wield a double handed blade with ease, a blade near as big as Arya, who danced around him and dodged his swings more oft than not. But when Robb did catch her – always with the flat of the blade, because Robb was always gentle with his little sister – the bruises Arya was left with were enough to turn their lady mother an unnatural shade of purple. They would both be made to swear off sparring with each other every time and every time their promises only lasted as long as it took Arya to be able to pick up her Needle again. That was not to say that it was always Arya who came out the loser. Her _dancing teacher _who had followed them north to Winterfell had instructed her well. Half the time, it was Robb caught with her blade next to his head or hovering over his heart or under his arm, ready to skewer him, and Arya would proudly declare him dead with a wicked grin. Robb would scowl but ruffle her hair nonetheless and demand they go again.

From where he was mounted on his horse, Ser Hardyng followed her gaze across the yard. He made a face. “Girls playing at swords,” he muttered as he took his soft leather gloves from a servant and brought the reins of his horse in hand. “Now I’ve seen it all.”

Sansa, ever the measured lady, looked back at him. “I have no doubt you could show her some new skills, Ser, if it would not delay you too much,” she said, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

Arya had always had a sense for dramatic irony, as at that moment, she tripped Robb into the dirt and had Needle at his neck in one fluid movement, quicker than the blink of an eye. “Dead.”

Harry Hardyng paled just a little at that, but it was enough to satisfy Sansa, who concealed the uptick of her lips by pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “I would, my lady, but my ship is docked at White Harbour and it would be very discourteous to keep them waiting for me.”

“Of course, my lord,” she said, wishing he would just leave before she burst out laughing.

She got her wish, as soon he was trotting across the yard, behind his banner bearer and followed by a small retinue of guards. “Until we meet again, my lady,” he called behind him and Sansa gave a courteous wave. She caught Robb glowering at him out of the corner of her eye and bit back a small sigh. Her brother had the wolf’s blood, that much the years had made clear. _One day I’m going to have to marry _someone, she had told him, but it hadn’t done much good.

The gates closed behind Harry and his retinue and Sansa let out a breath that she felt like she’d been holding for days, her shoulders slumping, the mask of her features slipping back into something that felt more _her._

“What I wouldn’t give to see men like that go a couple rounds with our Arya,” a familiar voice said. Sansa turned to see the captain of her father’s guard looking after Harry, his eyes hard.

She smirked. “Did you see how fast he ran when I suggested exactly that?”

“I did,” Jory said, mirth glimmering in his brown eyes.

Just then, Arya appeared at her elbow. Robb was still dusting the dirt off his training leathers as he followed her, Grey Wind appearing out of seemingly nowhere to skulk at his heels. “What was wrong with this one?” Arya asked. “Not that I’m disappointed you turned him down. He seemed a bit up himself.”

“Not even the Vale is worth being married to the likes of him,” Robb agreed, ice blue eyes flickering.

Sansa rolled her eyes. “You two think just because you wear steel you’re exempt from any sort of subtlety. You’re speaking of the Heir to the Vale.”

“There’s not much subtle about a greatsword, San,” the brother that might have been her twin remarked. It got a laugh out of Arya and Jory, if nothing else.

“At any rate,” she said with a beleaguered sigh, “you ought to at least try to get on better with men you might one day call upon for aid, _Lord Robb.” _Her elder brother rolled his eyes but said nothing, knowing she was right. “As for what was wrong with him, father once promised me a match with someone worthy,” she thought back to her father’s calloused hand laid over her tiny, soft one. Back when she was just a little girl, blind to the evils of the people who would use her. “Someone brave and gentle and strong. Harry wasn’t it.”

Arya made a gagging sound in her throat, which Robb smacked her upside of the head for. “Ow,” she growled. “Well, Summer didn’t like him straight away. He started growling the moment he saw him.”

It was true. The Starks had received Harry in the Great Hall, their wolves in tow, and Summer had taken an immediate disliking to him. It was all Sansa really needed to know. Summer was by far the sweetest dispositioned of the three direwolves left at Winterfell, with Ghost at the Wall with Jon.

“The direwolves are creatures of the Old Gods. They can judge a man’s character as fast as look at him,” Robb said.

Just as he spoke, Jory brought his hand behind Grey Wind’s ears to scratch and Grey Wind bent his head, whining at the attention.

Even Robb looked a little shocked as the surly wolf nuzzled into the captain of the guard, sweet as honey. Everyone knew the only reason Grey Wind wasn’t the meanest wolf in the Keep was because Shaggydog could make a bear look tame. Yet here he was, whining at his ears scratched instead of snapping his jaws at the hand that was so arrogant to think it might touch him.

“Fucking wolf hasn’t _looked _at me in a week,” Robb said, chagrined.

The jealousy writ large on his face had Sansa and Arya stifling their giggles behind gloved hands.

**II.**

The snow lay in a thin, undisturbed carpet when Sansa went to the godswood at first light. It soaked through the front of her quilted dress when she knelt, but the leather of her boots came above her knees, keeping her dry and warm.

The face of the weirwood looked out at her, crying its red sap as she prayed. She knew it was silly to kneel before the heart tree. The Old Gods had none of the pomp and rituals of the Seven. She knew her mother had found it strange at first that her father would sit and sharpen his sword in a place of worship, but now, Sansa found comfort in that fact. The Old Gods took their children as they came. No rules to abide by, no sinning, no Septons. Just a parent’s love for their children, nature’s love for its creatures.

_Please, _she thought. _Please watch over them._

She prayed for her father who grieved his oldest friend. Nearing his fortieth name day, he was riding South for a war he never wanted to be a part of. Let the Stags and Lions fight amongst themselves, let the krakens fuss and preen in their oceans, let the Roses and Vipers grow and twist around their necks and strangle them all. Wolves in their packs needed no one else. _Please return him to me._

She prayed for Robb, who would sit their father’s war councils and lead his vanguard. Robb who had a military mind with a map before him, but who had never actually bared his steel with intent to kill. _He is so young. He needs to live, needs to love. Please return him to me._

She prayed for all her father’s men, for each and every one who had watched over her and her siblings. For the men who had spirited them away from that viper pit of a city in the South. She prayed for the ones she did not know but had mothers and wives and children awaiting their return, nonetheless.

She was praying for Jory, she realised. Sweet Jory who, as Arya told it, had helped his lord’s daughter chase off her direwolf with rocks and sworn to keep it secret. That same night, Jory had held Sansa through the sobs that racked her body as her lord father slit Lady’s throat to save the wolf from the butcher, Ilyn Payne. Jory who never strayed far enough so that he could not be by their sides in an instant. Brave, gentle, strong Jory.

A twig snapped behind her and Sansa flinched, looking around with wide eyes. “Beg your pardon, my lady,” it was him, looking utterly embarrassed. “I- I did not think anyone would be here, at this time.”

“It’s okay, Jory,” she said, willing her thudding heart to slow down. “I was- I wanted to pray. For the men marching south.”

He smiled. He had such a wry smile. “You kneel when you pray?” he asked, as glib as he dared when he spoke to his lord’s daughter.

Sansa frowned at him. “I do. We can’t all sit and sharpen swords and play the brooding knight.”

His laugh was loud and bawdy. It made Sansa want to smile. “Lord Eddard does like to brood, doesn’t he?”

“He knows nothing better.”

He chuckled again and gestured to the spot beside her. She nodded her acquiesce. “There’s a first time for everything,” he said, grunting a little as he lowered himself to his knees. “Maybe they’ll pay me mind if I do it this way.”

“In my mother’s religion,” she began, her voice sounding high and airy, “it is a position of submission to the will of the Seven. The way one submits to duty, the way a wife submits to husband.”

Jory glanced at her out of the side of his eye. “Some amount of shite those Southrons fill their heads with.” When she looked at him with shock, he said, “What? You ever seen your lady mother submit to your lord father? Northern women give as good as they get, and she was quick to learn it.”

Sansa felt confusion knotting in her stomach. Her mother was the perfect picture of a lady, and Jory knew that. “It- it is a wife’s duty,” she stammered, “to be her husband’s champion and to submit to him so that she might bear his children.”

Jory actually laughed at that, and she could feel her cheeks smarted with embarrassment in the cold. “Nothing submissive about it, if you’re doing it properly,” he said with a cheeky grin.

“That is _not-“ _she declared hotly, her face burning.

“-what you meant. I know, my lady,” he said and rose from his knees, dusting the snow away. “That kneeling business hurts.”

It made sense that he would be so wild, of the North, and not be able to kneel. Just then, her knees gave a twinge, as if to say _you are of the North too. You are Sansa Stark. _“Have you even prayed?” she asked, a little belligerent sounding.

“Aye. I asked that they bring me home from this war. But where we’re going, they have no eyes to watch over us.”

With that, he was walking away, his cloak snapping in the breeze.

_Bring him home to me._

**III.**

With Lord Eddard and Robb at war, Sansa found herself falling into the role of Lady of Winterfell. Rickon, still only eight years old, bore the mental scars of his mother and father leaving him all those years ago and did not take the departure of their father and brother with the war host well. Lady Catelyn spent much of her time trying to keep him under control, bemoaning at night to Sansa with tears in her eyes that it was only fitting that her last child be the wildest. When her mother was not trying to tame her youngest brother, she was reading with Bran and keeping him educated so that he might play the role of acting Lord well. Not that Bran needed much help. Her brother, now twelve name days, spoke with such certainty Sansa found himself believing him regardless. When he said that Father and Robb would return from war, he was certain of it, it almost made the churning in her belly cease. He was easily the most intelligent of the Stark children, which was saying something. They were not a dim-witted brood.

Rickon, as quick as he could be to anger, was whip smart and eager to be in the know and Robb was currently winning a war with such ease he might as well have had his eyes shut. Not to mention, Maester Luwin had gotten a raven a moon’s turn ago that said their brother, Jon Snow was to be the next Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Sansa had not dared mention it before her mother, but she had shared the message with Arya in private and they had both shed a tear and crafted a letter that spoke of their pride in him. As for Arya, she not only knew how to fight better than most men but was still leagues better at her sums than Sansa was, to the point that when Vayon Poole brought Sansa the ledgers to be looked over, without fault she would always ask for Arya. And as for herself, she did not like to think too highly of herself, but even at court in King’s Landing all those years ago, she had seen that she could be smarter than even most of the high Lords and Ladies.

Running a household quite suited Sansa. She oversaw Ser Rodrik’s training of troops so that they would be ready to aid the army in the South if there was need. She ordered the collection and organisation of the last harvest and oversaw the steady stream of smallfolk taking up residence in the Wintertown, directing their labour towards where it was most needed.

The only thing that made Sansa feel even a little helpless were her father and brother’s letters as they waged a war far to the South.

By the time the Northern army had been amassed and marched below the Neck, the War of the Four Kings was all but over. Renly Baratheon was quick to die and Balon Greyjoy did more squawking than actual fighting, although Theon’s desertion back to his birth father had stung and Sansa ached to comfort Robb with a hug rather than words. After a tense discussion on the Isle of Faces – even her father was hard pressed to _like _Stannis Baratheon – the Stark, Tully and Baratheon banners joined together once more and marched on the lions of Lannister. It had seemed a sure thing, the Lannisters pulling back and cowering in the Red Keep until the Dornish had thrown themselves into the mix, declaring a boy with a mop of dyed blue hair the son of the Last Dragon. Even more suddenly, Daenerys Targaryen landed on her ancestral seat with three fire breathing dragons of her own and put Stannis Baratheon’s household to the sword, taking the Princess Shireen as a hostage.

No matter the strength of his claim or the steel of his heart, Stannis had not been prepared to stand against three dragons and risk his daughter. _You should have seen Father, _Robb had written her, _He was incredible. Calm as the waters in the Godswood, he stood before the Dragon Queen and proposed since her routing of Dragonstone had killed the Lady Selyse, she should be Stannis’ new bride and they should rule as King and Queen together. Stannis looked like his teeth would shatter if he clenched his jaw any tighter, but he stood there and said nothing. The Dragon Queen asked why she should not just take wing and burn the lot of us. And Father – again, utterly calm – answered she would have to burn fifty thousand men, many of them farmers and stable hands guilty of nought but answering their liege lord’s call, and if she did, the North and Riverlands would rise in open rebellion. He told her if she thought his son was fierce, she ought to meet his daughters! You could tell she did not want to respect him but could not help herself. Father’s hands were shaking when we left the throne room. I’m writing to Jon next, he will not believe it-_

It made her heart sing to know this war was nearly over. Lannister and Tyrell tore each other apart in the capital, pauper Baratheon King against pauper Targaryen Prince and all that remained would be crushed under the talons of three dragons. The victory was all but theirs and soon the Northmen would march home, having only raised their swords to beat back the Lannisters from the Riverlands.

It occurred to her later, after her father and brother had bent the knee at the joint coronation of Stannis and Daenerys, first of their names, that some of her father’s army might elect to stay in the South. It was not uncommon in the histories, a Northern army marching South, intent on dying for their liege lord and when they did not, having nowhere to go. Many would have marched South with the intent of leaving their families with one less mouth to feed in the winter. Many more did not have wives or children to return to. How many would weather the march back to the North when nothing awaited them there except a life harder than the one they could expect to live in the South? The thought of Jory not coming home, of him taking a Southron wife and living out his days in some small, sun kissed keep by the seaside, it made some green-eyed monster in her stomach roar. No, she told herself, Jory would not abandon them for a doe eyed Southron maiden with a head full of fantasies. He was of the North, and to the North he would return.

She asked as much of her mother at breakfast and Lady Catelyn shot her a peculiar look. “No, Sansa, I do not think Jory Cassel would leave Winterfell for the charms of the South. He is captain of your father’s guard, after all,” she said softly, but even though, Sansa heard the warning in her tone. _He is your father’s man, _it said, _and of a minor house. Not a man suitable for a daughter of Winterfell._

Sansa decided not to mention it to her lady mother again.

When the Northern army was within a hundred miles of Winterfell, more than a year since they had left, Sansa ordered the preparation of a Homecoming feast large enough to feed all the Noble lords and their knights and retainers. But an army was slow moving and the longer the men spent treading up the Kingsroad, the more likely Sansa was to bite her fingernails to the quick. She longed to see her father and brother again. Longed to walk the battlements of Winterfell with her hand tucked in the crook of Lord Eddard’s arm, to muss Robb’s red curls and giggle as he grumbled in protest.

She tried not to look for Jory as her father’s household marched into the yard at Winterfell. _If he does not wish to return here, then let him be happy, _she whispered to her gods, _let him know warmth on his skin and the feel of a new-born babe in his arms._

Her father was first to pull her in to hug him and she dabbed a tear from his cheek before his men could see. Robb’s embrace was strong enough to crack the bones in her back, “San,” he said with something akin to relief. Then came the bannermen. Greatjon Umber, Lady Maege Mormont, Lord Hornwood and his eldest son, Daryn, Lord Rickard Karstark and all his sons and so many more it made her head hurt to remember all their names, but she did it anyway.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted him reining up his horse. He was looking at her with that wry smile of his and his warm brown eyes and it was enough to make her breath catch in her throat. Lord Glover was confused by the sudden break in their inane chatter, but she went back to speaking with him at once, even though she could practically hear Jory laughing at how he had so easily disarmed her.

She resolved to not be so easy to melt with his gaze. The Gods had answered her prayers and brought him home. She would not fall so easily into his arms like a fainting maiden.

Now he had to do some work.

**IV.**

It was the finest meal Sansa had eaten in a long time. They had been so careful to not be extravagant during the war, to save their stores for winter and their money for the army, but Sansa and Lady Catelyn and Vayon Poole had all agreed that a touch of extravagance would be fitting for the Lord and his army returning home. She ate suckling pig and sipped at spiced Dornish wine and laughed at the merriments as the singers spun tales of the Quiet Wolf who even the Dragon must be silent to listen to. Her lord father was pink in the cheeks but whether it was with embarrassment from the open praise of his deeds or the flagon of wine he was sharing with her lady mother, Sansa could not be sure. To top it all off, Bran even shuffled his lemon cake onto her plate, saying, “You always had the bigger sweet tooth.”

As the long benches were pushed aside to make room for the dancing, Daryn Hornwood came forward to the high table on the dais and stopped before her. “Lady Sansa,” he said, his voice deeper than she last remembered, “I would ask you for the honour of a dance.”

Even with her belly fit to burst, there was no polite way to refuse, so Sansa followed him and was spun around to some slower tune, smiling prettily as he spoke of her brother’s valour in battle. _If it is Robb you find so chivalrous, maybe you ought to go dance with him, _she twitched to say but bit it back. Robb had knocked into her only a moment ago, stopping only to say a quick apology before going back to spinning around with Dacey Mormont, the heir to Bear Island who wore men’s mail in battle. The woman stood at heights with her brother and had a homely beauty to her, but Robb was obviously entranced if he hadn’t even stopped to shoot a warning glare at the man trying to charm his sister.

When the song changed over, it was Harrion Karstark who stepped in to claim her next dance. “That one is supposed to be marrying my sister,” he said, glaring at Daryn Hornwood and for a second Sansa felt a surge of relief, that maybe the Karstark heir wasn’t here to try to seduce her but to defend his sister’s honour. But then, “Not that I can blame him, you could turn the noblest man’s head, Lady Sansa.” She tried not to roll her eyes at that and instead said a demure word of thanks. Sansa kept up her polite laughter at his japes and tried to stamp down on her nausea as Harrion swung her round and round, but she could do little to reign in her wandering attention. She spotted Jory then, leaning against a wall surrounded by his fellow guardsmen with a tankard in hand. His eyes met hers and he smirked. Always smirking. Not even feeling sorry for her, just basking in his own amusement.

However, when the song changed, it was not another lordling who swept in to steal her away but the captain of the guard. He held out a hand for her, “My lady, it would be an honour,” he said, and she took it without so much as a backwards glance at Harrion Karstark.

Jory’s hands were warm in hers and he had the scent of beer on him, but it didn’t matter to Sansa as he spun her once and then pulled her in. “I was loathe to tear you away from the noble lordlings,” he said, his voice still that scratchy grumble it had always been, “you seemed like you were having so much fun.”

She laughed her first honest laugh of the night. “Tell me it wasn’t _that _obvious,” she said, “I don’t wish to cause offence.”

“No,” he assured her. “It would only be obvious to someone who knows you.”

By that point, every lady had been claimed by a lord to be spun about the hall. Except for her lady mother who sat at the high table with her lord father, deep in conversation and in their cups. Even Arya was dancing, standing on Robb’s feet and squawking with laughter as he spun her round and round. Jory’s guardsmen and other unpaired knights and retainers sat at the edges of the hall, drinking deeply and yelling at each other over the music. “Don’t your men have a castle to guard?” she asked Jory as his hand shifted from her waist to the small of her back, a move that no doubt made the colour rise in her cheeks if his wry grin was anything to go by.

“Your father gave the men who marched south a night off,” he said, “he probably never meant for us to crash his posh feast, but I thought someone ought to bring the fun.”

She gave him a thump on the chest with the flat of her hand, but he barely even moved. “Are you saying we Starks don’t know how to have fun?” He laughed but did not answer – and that was answer enough. “I was worried you wouldn’t come back,” she said, but she did not know what compelled her to say it.

Their armies had come home thinner than when they had marched out, Robb had told her, and not all of them were battle fatalities. A good two thousand had dispersed in the Riverlands, their oaths fulfilled, to find new wives to take on or new lords with warmer keeps to fight for.

“I was worried I wouldn’t either,” he said, missing her meaning. “But we asked, and the Gods answered.”

“No,” she said, “I was worried you would… stay in the South.”

He halted for a second, reading the furrow of her brow, the slight frown on her lips. “No, my lady,” he said, “My place is here.” The _with you _was left unsaid, but Sansa didn’t believe she imagined it.

When the song changed, she feared he might have let another Karstark take her over, or a Glover or a Manderly, but he spun her away from prying hands with an almost graceful ease and pulled her closer as a bawdier song began. They danced and hopped and laughed at each other as limbs got tangled and toes got stepped on. Whilst long ago, Sansa might have turned her nose up at the clumsiness and lack of poise, tonight she felt free as she twined her fingers in Jory’s and he spun her round and round.

Eddard and Torrhen Karstark, some son of House Glover and a knight of House Manderly all tried their best to slip in during song breaks and have their chance at charming Lord Eddard’s daughter, but Sansa let them wait all night at the side of the hall. Jory only had to smile at her wryly and she knew she never wanted to dance with anyone again.

Even as the night grew old and the Noble Lords retired to their rooms, Sansa kept up dancing with Jory, as long as the lute player kept going. Her finer hairs were sticking to her face from the exertion and he was short of breath, but it felt so perfect she couldn’t bear to tear herself away. It was like so many songs, the knight and the maiden so lost in each other they did not know what happened beyond their own little world. Thankfully, her lord father was much too drunk to notice and was dragging Lady Catelyn off to their bedchamber without so much as a word of the normal courtesies. Sansa blushed a violent red at her father’s impropriety, but it made Jory laugh. “He’s only like that when he comes back from war,” Jory said, “for once the painfully honourable git forgets his flowery words.” To her father’s credit, her mother did not exactly seem scandalised, if the way she clung to his side was anything to go by, but she did catch the way her mother was looking at her and Jory with a touch of apprehension before she left. Sansa’s gut clenched. At least Arya and Bran and Rickon were gone to bed and Robb too busy charming the Mormont woman to pay her much heed.

They weren’t the last ones left when Jory bemoaned his early guard duty on the morrow, but it was a close thing. Sansa wanted nothing more that to insist they stay for one more dance, but her feet were aching and the soft look in his eyes made her feel like she couldn’t refuse her anything.

They left Robb and Dacey huddled together on a bench, deep in their cups, and a few of Jory’s men who had been hooting at them and went outside into the yard. The snow was deeper under their feet than it had been before the banners marched South, and the chill was a welcome relief from the heat of the hall.

“I’ll escort you to your rooms, my lady,” he said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm as snow flurried around them.

Sansa could have scoffed. “It’s Winterfell, Jory. What lurks in the shadows? Grumpkins and snarks?”

“My charge is to keep you safe,” he said. “And your family,” came as the afterthought.

The snow was melting in his hair, dark as a raven’s wing and she pulled him up short. He was looking at her so sweetly, his eyes like honeyed almonds and a snowflake drifted and landed on his bottom lip. She swept it away with her thumb, but her fingers lingered on his face.

She leant in and he met her halfway and their lips joined in the sweetest kiss she had ever known.

**V.**

It had been months since the return of the Northmen and the feast remained in infamy on many a servant’s lips. Their ever-stoic Lord as drunk as anyone had ever seen, lost in the charms of his lady wife, so in love it made the serving girls swoon. Robb Stark who had walked past a dozen pretty ladies in their pretty skirts with their pretty hairstyles to dance and kiss and some even said lie with a woman who preferred the sword to the sewing needle. And Sansa Stark, Lord Eddard’s treasured daughter, ignoring all the more eligible men to dance with the Captain of the Guard.

Sansa wasn’t sure how much was true about Robb and Dacey, as Robb refuted any deflowering harshly whenever it was whispered within his earshot. She didn’t much mind either way, she was just glad her brother’s dalliance had kept their father’s wrath focused away from her. The idea of Robb dishonouring a noble maiden, no matter how much he denied it, had fairly distracted from Sansa’s measly scandal of dancing with an unlanded man.

She was glad to say it worked out for her brother in the end, though, because when he and Dacey came to Lord Eddard, begging his leave to marry, their father was so quick to agree that Robb hadn’t even finished speaking yet.

After Robb had become betrothed and he planted a kiss on his lady’s lips there and then before his family and the guardsmen, Sansa left the hall with a smile on her lips. She had sometimes worried her brother would be too wild to find a woman suitable for him but that had disappeared the moment she saw him with Dacey Mormont. Sansa had had to stifle a laugh at the look on her mother’s face when Robb had been so open with his affection and Dacey had responded in kind. Sometimes, even Sansa found her mother’s ladylike ways a little silly.

“Romantic,” a voice said, and she would have jumped if it were not the second time he’d snuck up on her in so many days. She smiled at Jory and did not resist as he grabbed her hand and pulled her into the narrow servant’s pass, hidden from sight. “For the life in me though, I can’t imagine our Robb a married man.”

Sansa snorted in a way she might have considered unattractive in days gone by, days before him. She pushed a curl of his unruly dark hair behind his ear. “She will give as good as she gets,” she said. _I will too, _she thought.

Then he was crowding her up against the rough stone wall, one hand at the back of her neck, the other on her cheek and kissing her sweetly, the stubble on his cheeks brushing her own soft skin. It was so brief, it made something low in her belly ache and yearn. He pulled back. He never gave her more than a kiss. She never asked for more. She knew he would not say no, would not refute her. She wouldn’t make him the man who dishonoured his liege lord’s daughter, no matter how much she might ache for him. For now, his lips and his smiles would suffice.

“Why have you never married?” she asked him, and for a second she could not believe the words had slipped out her mouth.

Jory looked at her, a little dumbstruck, “Sansa?”

“Forget it,” she said, shaking her head. “I did not mean to ask it.”

“But you did,” he said, and brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheekbone. “I guess I just never met a woman worth giving this place up for. My father died by your father’s side, trying to rescue your aunt, because he loved her-“

“It seemed many people loved my lady aunt.”

“No, my father did not love her that way, sweet. He loved her the way brothers love sisters, the way my family loves yours. You Starks have a way of doing that, of making people love you so strongly they’re willing to die for you,” he said.

“It’s my father,” she said, “it’s hard not to love someone with a heart as good as his.”

“I could say the same of you,” he said, and her heart fluttered, even as he looked pained to say it. He leant back against the wall opposite her and watched her with something akin to sadness in his eyes. “Sansa, sweet, please tell me now if this is all some great folly to you. A flight of fancy before Lord Eddard weds you off and you bear some high and noble lord his children. If that’s what this is, spare me the pain of it and tell me now.”

“Jory-“ she said, but he was not done.

“-‘Cause I’ll be honest, I hate sneaking around behind your father’s back. I hate him making me your escort to the market and not knowing the excitement that fills me with, to have you to myself for a couple hours. I hate how your lady mother looks at me, like all I’m good and worthy for is to shield you, but never anything more,” his brown eyes were watery, his lips twisted in a grimace and Sansa could tell he’d spent many a restless night worrying himself sick. She knew because she had too, thinking this was all some jape to Jory, playing the honourable guardsman to her father’s face whilst making her his plaything behind her father’s back. But no, now it was clear. It was clear in the hard-set determination of his jaw and the strain of his voice. If he did not mean something to her, he was ready to end it now. The idea of never knowing his smile again, never tasting his lips flooded Sansa with fear and she reached out and grabbed her leather jerkin, to keep him with her.

“I _hate _it too,” she insisted, “I hate sneaking around and lying to him. But I can’t- I can’t lose you. It would tear me up inside, if he sent you away and wed me off to Harrion Karstark or Harrold Hardyng or some other arrogant lordling who would turn his nose up at anyone below his station. I can’t stand to make a mockery of him, Jory, but I can’t stand to lose you either. Ever since King’s Landing and Joffrey and the Queen, you’re the first person to make me believe in the songs again, to make me believe that life can be beautiful, and men can be true and chivalrous-“

He shook his head and sighed. “Sansa, love, there’s nothing chivalrous about a man without land and title. I’m nought but a glorified bodyguard-“

Undeterred, she cut across him. “I wouldn’t care if you were a farmer, you oaf. Your wealth and lands don’t matter to me. What matters is your heart and I have seen it and it is good and gentle and brave-“ she realised she was thumping him in the chest to punctuate her every word, but he didn’t complain, just watching her face with eyes wide as saucers. “He promised me once. He promised me he’d make a match worthy of me. Someone brave and gentle and strong. I won’t marry a Joffrey or a Harrold Hardyng or whatever other cravens come crawling out of the woodwork trying to position themselves closer to _Lord Stark_. I want you.”

It took her a second to realise the hands gripping hers were trembling and as soon as she feared she might have overreached and scared him off, he surged forwards and kissed her with a heat she hadn’t yet known. She sighed into him, his tongue running over her bottom lip, his strong arms pulled her flush against him. She tangled her fingers in his unruly hair, urging him closer and closer.

Her belly and hips were flush against him and there was fire stirring in her, deep down, her entire body growing heavy with want. She could feel his manhood, hardening against her belly and the sound that escaped her throat was not a moan but a growl, akin to the direwolves. _Is this what men mean when they speak of their wants and urges? _She wondered. _I feel like if I don’t have him right now, on me, in me, I might burn up and perish. _Their teeth clashed, lips bruised, and his fingers were digging into her sides, her hips, his right hand wandering lower and lower to the curve of her rear. Gods, he could have had her there and then if he wanted. Up against a wall in a servant’s pass or any other way he wanted. She should have been ashamed at the thought, but it only made her desire burn hotter, her need for him grow stronger.

When he pulled away, she couldn’t help the pitiful whine that escaped her throat. His chest was heaving, his lips wet and swollen. Their eyes met, his brown ones blazing into hers. He hovered for a second, snapped his gaze away and turned on his heel. Just like that, he was gone before she could pull him back to her. T_he Gods gave me someone honourable, just as I asked, _she thought,_ and this is the price of it._

She laid her head back against the cool stone and let out a laboured breath.

**VI.**

Some weeks later, she broke her fast in her father’s solar with her parents and Arya. Robb had taken the boys and ridden North to the Wall with his betrothed and ten guards, so that the Lord Commander might meet his future goodsister. Sansa knew as well as any of them that Robb and Dacey alone were enough to protect Bran, and Rickon needed no armoured guards with Shaggydog at his side, but Lady Catelyn had insisted on at least ten men and they had acquiesced in the end, if it kept her happy.

Her father was speaking with Vayon Poole and Maester Luwin over his breakfast, something about the accounts. Sansa would have normally listened and lent her voice to the mix, but she felt groggy today. Last night, she had snuck out of bed to visit Jory at his post at the bottom of the turret tower and hadn’t made it to sleep until the sun was near on the horizon. Arya seemed equally as sleepy and intent on her breakfast, but Sansa chalked that up to her sister always hating mornings.

When Sansa had finished her plate of fruit, Maester Luwin and Vayon Poole gathered their papers and left the solar, muttering with their heads together about food stores that Sansa told herself she would ask for word of later. Then, Jory came in, sending her a soft look but otherwise ignoring her, as he always did before her parents. He offered Lord Eddard the guard’s report and changes to the stationing of his men, which her lord father nodded his approval to. Jory had been captain of the guard for so many years at this point that her father trusted him beyond a doubt. It made her gut twinge with guilt.

“Thank you, Jory,” Lord Eddard said before resuming his breakfast. It took him a moment to realise Jory was still stood before him. He looked up from his bread and fruit and raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, I thought that was all. What else do you have for me?” he asked.

Jory seemed silent for a moment, before his eyes flitted to Sansa and he took a breath. Her stomach lurched. _Gods be good. _“Lord Eddard, I… I have been meaning to ask of you-“

“Spit it out, man, you know I would never deny you.”

Sansa’s grip on the butter knife in her hand tightened and her knuckles went pale. Arya shot her an odd glace, confusion writ large on her face.

“It’s about Sansa, my lord,” he said, and his face seemed pale as a fresh winter snow.

Her father and mother turned to look at her and Sansa’s stomach did a nasty flip. “San?” Lord Eddard asked, confused. Her mother’s face was unreadable as ever.

_Gods, what are you? A scared little girl? _She asked herself, even as fear sloshed inside of her like water. _No. You’re a wolf. Act like it._

With a steely resolve her elder brother would have been proud of, she scraped her chair back on the flagstone floor and moved around the table to stand by Jory’s side. As an afterthought, she wrapped her long, slender fingers around the cool chainmail that covered his forearm. Even he seemed shocked at that.

“Father,” she began, her voice somehow more solid than she felt, “Jory and I- we have become close, since you all came home from war-“

“Gods be good,” Lady Catelyn breathed and dropped her face into her hands. First, her precious Robb. Now, her sweet Sansa.

“He is as good a man as you could want for me,” she pressed on, ignoring her mother, “and I know you know that. He is kind and true-“

But her father wasn’t looking at her, he was glaring at Jory, grey eyes as cold as steel. “What is the meaning of this, Cassel?” he asked, a quiet fury rising in his voice. He never called him Cassel. It was always Jory. “She is half your age, and your charge, no less. I don’t pay you to cavort with my daughters. I don’t trust you with their safety so that you can make a fool of me-“

“Everything that has happened, it was me who acted first,” she said, loud and clear over her father. It was the first time in her life she had spoken over him. It was terrifying and exhilarating. “He has never asked for something I did not wish to give, father. You know him, you have known him for years. Tell me you think he is capable of coercing and manipulating, tell me you do not think he would have fought his feelings for as long as he was able and felt guilt at not telling you every waking moment. Tell me those things and we will stop this.” She had him. Honourable Lord Eddard never could tell a lie. “We did not tell you because we were afraid. Afraid you would send him away and make me wed someone I did not want. But we’re telling you now, father. We are sorry for hiding it from you for so long, but we won’t apologise for love. You made a promise to me, once. All I ask is that you honour your promise.”

Arya had been silent and a little dumbstruck the entire time, but now she was smiling at Sansa. Sansa knew it would amuse her, to see the perfect sister play the disobedient child for once, but she thought she saw pride there too, glimmering in her sister’s stormy eyes, so like their father’s. Her lady mother was now looking at her too, with something akin to wonder slowly replacing the disbelief. “Family, duty, honour. Those are the Tully words, mother,” Sansa said, in a voice high and shaky as a leaf. “Family is first.”

Lady Catelyn smiled a sad smile, “Family must always come first, child.”

Lord Eddard was shaking his head from side to side, still in disbelief, and looked to Jory. “What do you have to say for yourself? My daughter speaks well, but she is her mother’s child so it must be expected. What say you?”

Jory looked at her, fear flashing in her eyes, but she gave her most reassuring smile and gripped his gloved fingers in hers. It seemed to embolden him. “I think I have loved her for as long as she has been a woman, my lord. In the South when we were at war, when I thought of home it was Lady Sansa I thought of. I know, I know I have dishonoured you and betrayed your trust by loving her, but I do love her, my lord. With all my heart.”

For once, her lord father looked his years, the lines creasing deep in his forehead as he squeezed the arch of his nose between two fingers. “Love is the death of duty,” he muttered.

“I ask you, my lord,” Lady Catelyn said, her voice soft, her hand laid gently over his forearm on the table, “what we said we wanted for our children, the night we wed? You were marrying me in your brother’s place, and you would ride off to war before the festivities even ceased. I knew I might never see you again and for a time before Robb quickened in my womb, I had no one. No one in all the world. What did we wish for our children when we, children ourselves in truth, were in that dark time?”

Her lord father sighed and looked from Jory to Sansa to his wife. “Happiness,” he said, his voice so quiet she had to strain her ears to hear. “We wished them happiness.”

“And what do you see before you now if not happiness?”

Lord Eddard got to his feet and rounded the table, and for the barest second Sansa was glad he did not wear his steel to breakfast. Then, he looked Jory dead in the eye and said, “If there is ever a day where you do not make my daughter happy anymore, I will run you through myself.”

Jory nodded, solemn as a Stark. “If that day ever comes, I’ll kneel and give you my own sword.”

“Men,” Sansa muttered under her breath, but she squeezed Jory’s hand in her own and her heart felt ready to burst.

**VII.**

When the time came, she gripped Jory’s hand so hard in her own she could almost feel his bones creaking under hers. She couldn’t bring herself to care much, though. It was him that had gotten her into this, and it had damned well better be him that got her out of it.

Arya would later tell her she screamed loud enough to bring Winterfell crashing down, but all Sansa knew at the time was the pain, the splitting pain. She cursed every God she could think of and her husband for good measure, but it did little to relieve her.

One minute she was screaming, and the next she knew, Jory was holding a tiny, squalling mite of a babe in his arms. Tears fell freely down his cheeks and onto the babe’s bloody head. The order was given for the bells to ring from sunrise to sunset to herald the birth of the Lord’s granddaughter, just as they had for his daughter.

_You are so small I fear I might break you, _she thought as Jory laid the girl in her arms and smoothed her dampened hair down on her forehead. He smiled at her. “I never dreamed I’d have a daughter.”

Sansa looked down at the babe. “Orla Cassel is a good name,” she said.

“Her lungs rival her mother’s. She’s a fierce one.”

“That has been said about Stark women, yes,” Sansa said.

Jory grinned at that, his wry grin that made her heart flutter. “We shall just have to give her plenty brothers and sisters. A child like her needs siblings to boss about.”

Sansa could only glare at him. “You even mention such a thing again after the day I’ve had, and I’ll ask my lord father to bring his sword.”

He was laughing, and so was she.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I just cannot stand sad Starks, okay?
> 
> Lemme know what you think with a kudos or a comment or hmu at @baelonthebrave on tumblr! <3


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